With Audiences Encouraged to React, Primary Debates Seem More Made for TV

Audience members at a CNN debate, left, last week in North Charleston, S.C. On Monday in Tampa, Fla., those in attendance were asked not to cheer.Credit
Left, James Estrin/The New York Times; right, Chip Litherland for The New York Times

“Hello, Charleston!”

It was a few minutes before CNN’s debate in South Carolina last week, and a director for the network took the stage to make sure the audience was primed and limber.

Evidently dissatisfied with the lack of enthusiasm, he tried again. “You can do better than that!” he shouted. “Louder!”

“It was like whipping up a crowd before a high school basketball game,” recalled Bill Press, the liberal syndicated columnist and talk show host, who described CNN’s crowd warm-up in an interview. Minutes into that debate, Newt Gingrich would tear into the moderator, John King, for asking about the sordid allegations of an ex-wife, and would send the crowd to its feet.

“That’s the atmosphere that they wanted,” Mr. Press said. “And that’s the atmosphere that they got.”

As the debates have taken on an outsize significance in this Republican primary, attention has shifted to whether the news media, in their desire for a television moment, are creating too raucous an atmosphere.

Over the course of the campaign, candidates have risen (Mr. Gingrich) and fallen (Gov. Rick Perry) based on their debate performances. But the audience’s response has become as much a part of the calculation as the jabbing and parrying on the stage. The cheering, the booing and, perhaps worse, the silence affect the perception of how the candidates fared.

Mr. Gingrich, who overcame a double-digit deficit in the polls to win the South Carolina primary after two pugnacious debate performances last week, underscored this when he threatened to sit out any future debates in which the crowd was told not to react.

He directed his anger at a familiar target, the news media, which he accused of stifling free speech by limiting audience participation. NBC News, which hosted a debate on Monday in Tampa, told its audience members to keep their reactions to themselves, which they did.

But Mr. Gingrich’s response raised another question altogether: Does the roar of an exercised crowd distract from the real and weighty task at hand — selecting the best candidate for president — by encouraging candidates to play for applause lines?

“There was a debate in New Hampshire in which they said be polite, no cheering, no booing, and nobody minded,” said Gwen Ifill, the PBS correspondent and moderator of two vice presidential debates.

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In fact, the protocol for the general election debates, which are overseen by the Commission on Presidential Debates, is that audiences sit in virtual silence or risk being escorted out.

But the primary debates play by different rules. They are often co-sponsored by state parties or other political organizations, like the Tea Party Express, which teamed up with CNN for a debate in September. These groups are given discretion over most of the tickets, meaning that the audiences are usually a politically charged bunch.

And this year, the theatrics on the stage have been enlivened further by some colorful players, including Mr. Gingrich, a former Fox News contributor, and Herman Cain, a former pizza company executive and talk show radio host. Both men know how to work an audience. And before they dropped out of the race, Mr. Perry and Representative Michele Bachmann were both practiced enough in the art of the television sound bite that they could occasionally deliver a zinger even if it did not always roll off the tongue.

Network executives from Fox and CNN argue that regardless of the occasionally unruly crowds, their presidential debates are civic exercises intended to help educate and inform voters. But they also see the debates’ value as television productions. Active, engaged crowds are fun to watch. People who sit on their hands are not.

A debate with a mute audience, said Michael Clemente, senior vice president for news at Fox News, “is like a movie without a soundtrack.” Fox’s productions tend to be some of the slickest in the business, complete with a boom camera that sweeps over the roaring crowd, sometimes thousands strong.

Mr. Clemente says he sees civic value in allowing voters to react, something he believes they have come to expect at a time when anyone can pick up a smartphone and become an insta-pundit. “So many people are empowered by Twitter, Facebook. You have people who feel like they’re not just there to listen.”

For its part, CNN is proceeding with Thursday’s debate as it would for any other. Their stage director will be in Jacksonville, Fla., to loosen up the crowd of 1,200, most invited by the state Republican Party. Reaction will be encouraged, as long as it is respectful.

“We like to have an audience participate,” said Sam Feist, CNN’s Washington bureau chief, “so the viewers at home know that it’s a real debate with real people and real voters — that it’s not just taking place in a TV studio.”

Republican Debate: WHEN: Thursday at 8 p.m.
Eastern time
WHERE: University of North
Florida in Jacksonville
PARTICIPANTS: Newt Gingrich,
Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and
Rick Santorum
SPONSORS: CNN, CNN en
Español, the Hispanic
Leadership Network and the
Republican Party of Florida
TV: CNN
ON THE WEB: Live blogging
and analysis:
nytimes.com/politics

A version of this article appears in print on January 26, 2012, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: With Audiences Encouraged to React, Primary Debates Seem More Made for TV. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe